40. chatwin
TRANSCRIPT
To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe.(The Songlines)
Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989)Bruce Chatwin.
• Born in Sheffield in 1940.
• Spent much of the War in a
nomadic drift from one lodging to
another.
• At the age of four, he went to stay
with his great aunts Janie and
Gracie at Stratford-upon-Avon.
1. Life
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
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Bruce Chatwin
• Aunt Gracie read him poetry from an
anthology called The Open Road,
through which he discovered “the
strident, beckoning music of Walt
Whitman”.
• Aunt Janie, who was a reader of
modern fiction, introduced Bruce to
Hemingway, his acknowledged
mentor in prose style.Bruce Chatwin
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1. Life
• Attended Marlborough College and
developed a passion for antiques,
becoming a precocious collector.
• At fifteen acquired a copy of a classic
travel book, The Road to Oxiana
(1937) by Robert Byron, which he raised
to the status of a sacred text.
• In December 1958 started to work at the
London fine art auctioneers, Sotheby
and Co. of Bond Street.
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
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1. Life
• In 1973 was offered a job as a
freelance contributor to “The Sunday
Times Magazine”.
• Announced his departure with a
telegram: “Gone to Patagonia for six
months”.
• This trip was to result two years later
in a travel book, In Patagonia (1978).
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
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1. Life
• Four other books followed. The Viceroy of Ouidah, 1980On The Black Hill, 1982The Songlines, 1987Utz, 1988What Am I Doing Here, 1989
• Was diagnosed as HIV positive, died on 18 January 1989.
• Anatomy of Restlessness published posthumous in 1996.
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
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1. Life
• 97 sections.
• Invisible narrator.
• Description of the land, its history and people.
• Concise statements of location and time.
Bruce Chatwin
2. In Patagonia (1978)
Patagonia
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Bruce Chatwin
• Descriptions appealing to all senses.
• Quotations from outside the
text to provide authority and to offer differing perspectives and draw a connection between what he writes and the experience that he praises.
Patagonia
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2. In Patagonia (1978)
• The journey.
• The fascination with pre-historic cultures and exile.
• Nomadism and human restlessness.
• The community of Welsh exiles who led solitary and eccentric lives at the margins of society the symbol of the freedom of man to be what he chooses to be.
Bruce Chatwin
3. In Patagonia: themes
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My reason for coming
to Australia was to try
to learn for myself,
and not from other
men’s books, what a
Songline was – and
how it worked.
(The Songlines)
Bruce Chatwin
Ayer’s Rock (Uluru), Australia
4. The Songlines (1987)
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ABORIGENS
The songlines are a labyrinth of invisible pathways which stretch to every corner of Australia. Aboriginal creation myths tell of the legendary totemic ancestors – part animal, part man – who create themselves and then set out on immense journeys across the continent, singing the name of everything that crosses their path and so singing the world into existence.
Bruce Chatwin
4. The Songlines (1987)
Australian Aboriginal
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Two parts
Bruce’s and Arkady’s journey following the songlines
From the Notebooks: presents quotations that influenced Chatwin and longer descriptions of his encounters with anonymous desert wanderers and famous thinkers.
Bruce Chatwin
5. The structure of the book
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BRUCE THE NARRATOR
Arkady Volchok a 33-year-old Russian-Australian with a
double function in the book:
1) A mouthpiece for the thoughts of Chatwin himself.
2) Bruce’s guide into the mysteries of the songlines.
“The Aboriginals [..] were a people who trod lightly over the earth; and the less they took from the earth, the less they had to give in
return [...] The wars of the twentieth century are the price for having taken too much”
Bruce Chatwin
6. The Songlines (1987)
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DREAMTIME Part of aboriginal culture which explains the origins and culture of the land and its people. Dreamtime is Aboriginal Religion and Culture.
Bruce Chatwin
Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.
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6. The Songlines (1987)
Bruce Chatwin
CREATION Everything in the natural world is a symbolic footprint of the metaphysical beings whose actions created our world. As with a seed, the power of an earthly location is wedded to the memory of its origin. “Ancestor Spirits” came to Earth in human and other forms and the land, the plants and animals were given their form as we know them today.
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Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.
6. The Songlines (1987)
Once their work was done, the Ancestor Spirits changed again; into animals or stars or hills or other objects. For Indigenous Australians, the past is still alive and vital today and will remain so into the future. The Ancestor Spirits and their powers have not gone, they are present in the forms into which they changed at the end of the “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming”, as the stories tell.
Bruce Chatwin
Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.
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6. The Songlines (1987)
• The journey.
• Nomadic life.
• Criticism of western materialism.
• The rights of the aboriginals.
Bruce Chatwin
7. The Songlines: themes
Ayer’s Rock (Uluru), Australia
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